Tuesday April 21, 1998
Man oh Man! When I woke up this morning, I knew the day was destined to be icky. I had a full-blown sore throat. After downing some Theraflu, Wesley and I set off for the BMW museum. They had some interesting exhibits, but since we were pressed for time, we didn’t make it to all them videos. I was also disappointed that there were no free Z3 samples. Even a 3-Series would be OK. Oh well. I bought some postcards and a Z3 T-shirt instead.
When we headed back to the hotel, the fun really began. The controller (the ticket verifier) of the U-Bahn asked us for our tickets. We being the lawful Americans, pulled out our tickets and presented them to her. After looking at the tickets, then at us, then back to the tickets, she gave us one of those ‘Oh god, not more dumb tourists’ looks and informed us that we had the incorrect tickets and we owed the German government 60 Marks. Apparently what my college German translated as ‘Zone 1, Two Hours’ was actually ‘One Way, Two stops’. D’Oh! We explained to the controller that we didn’t understand what the ticket meant and that we were sorry. She then paraded us through the train, and lead us off the train at the next stop. I am certain she was telling everyone on the train how dumb we were, but then again it might just be the Theraflu. After consulting with her supervisor, she told us that we needed to buy a different ticket. She actually turned very nice on us, and helped us get the tickets. She did have some problems understanding the difference between the coin insert slot and the paper bill slot, but not wanting to anger her, we let her blame the machine. We thanked her and resumed the trek to the train station to get the rental car.
I grabbed some Burger King there, since it took Wesley over an hour to get the car. I tried to call the hotel to let Mom and Gary know what was happening, but the clerk at the hotel insisted that we had already checked out. I was soooooo pissed. I wasn’t feeling well at all and this was not helping me at all. We finally made it back to the hotel and loaded our VW Sharan van and then checked out. We couldn’t wait to leave Munich and get on the road.
The van was nice, but it needed more power for the Autobahn. Most of the cars on the road passed us like we were an old Trabant. Our trip to Koblenz was uneventful save for a McDonalds stop, a rest stop with a nice helpful lady who was nice so you’d tip her, and, of course, Mom’s bag of goodies spilled out over the floor. Six hours and a few throat clearings later we were in Koblenz. We wondered why it took so long. It shouldn’t have taken more than four hours, but I think it was due to traffic, the length of time it took to get out of Munich proper, and that dreaded road construction. There was some outstanding scenery that whizzed by at 120 kph.
I was really feeling crappy now, so when we got to the hotel, we had dinner, I drank some German NyQuil, and headed off to slumber. Mom and Gary were fretting about the not having time to visit the Rhine river area, and were blaming it on Wesley’s less-than-stellar travel arrangements. I would chalk it up to a combination of trying to do too much in a short period of time as well as not optimizing our time better. Brugge and a quick Koblenz photo op await us tomorrow, and I hope I feel better. Oh yeah, lots of bitching and moaning all around today. Road Trips do that to people.
